Contrary to popular belief, hostilities of the Civil War did not start with the Firing on Fort Sumter April
15th, 1861, nor, did it end at Appomatox on April 9th' 1865.

It began in Texas, Feb. 22nd, 1861, with the surrender of General Twiggs to Col. Ben McCulloch of the Confederate cause, and
ended May 26th, 1865, in Texas, with E. Kirby Smith's surrender to Maj. Gen.
Canby of the Federal Army.

You will note that prisoners of war were
involved in each instance. General Twiggs surrendered approximately 2650
scattered frontier guards without a shot being fired. He was a Southern sympathizer
and so were some of his officers and men, among them, E. Kirby Smith who
deflected to the Confederacy and became a noted Southern general. Those men who
remained loyal to the North were imprisoned in two Texas prison camps, one,
Camp Ford near Tyler, and the other Camp Groce near Hempstead.

The end of the war found Gen. E. Kirby Smith
in command of the TransMississippi Dept., which included Texas, surrendering
his scattered forces to General Canby, and Smith then decamped to Mexico and
thence to Cuba, from where he wrote privately to General Grant asking what he
could expect if he returned to the United States.

General Grant wrote as follows;

"E. Kirby Smith, late General Southern
Army;

Your letter dated Havanna, July 31st, 1805,
reached me but a day or two since, as I have been absent from this city since
the middle of July.
After consultation with the President of the United States, I am of the opinion
that you had better return to the United States, take the amnesty oath, and put
yourself on the same footing with the other prisoners I am authorized to say
that you will be treated exactly as if you had surrendered in Texas and had
been there paroled."
Your, etc.U. S. Grant.

The last official order of E. Kirby Smith, as
Commander of the TransMississippi Dept., was to order Captain Ernest Cuculler,
Chief of Secret Service, to go to New Orleans and surrender to General Canby,
the $3300.00 still being held in trust by him. General Candy remarked, "It
is Just like Kirby, who is the soul of honor."

On Nov. 14th, 1865, in Lynchburg, Va., E.
Kirby Smith took the oath of amnesty, and, because of his previous upright
conduct, the Provost Marshall said requirements of a parole were not necessary.
So we leave him to readjust his life, and he is a legend unto himself.

20,000 of the 50,000 Confederate officers and
soldiers surrendered by Smith were paroled in Texas, the remaining 30,000 just
vanished, mostly west to the new frontier. Apparently no Long range planning
for the consideration and care of prisoners of war was made by either side
until both were confronted with its necessity. The first battle of Manassas
started the parade of Northern prisoners south, and the capture of some
Southern sailors from the Blockade runner Savannah, and their detention in the
North, started a condition that had both its droll aspects and hideous
tragedies.

Northern soldiers were captured in nearly
every battle of the Virginia campaign and these were sent to Belle Isle, an
island in the James River, to a tobacco warehouse in Richmond, previously
operated by Libby & Son, and to Danville and Lynchburg where other tobacco
warehouses were used for prisons. Then because they were filled, and as
Northern armies pushed further south, stockades, prisoners and prison camps
were established at Salisbury, Raleigh and Goldsboro, in North Carolina.

Libby became a horrible place because of lack
of toilet facilities, lack of heat, beds, and medicine, and there were brutal
guards, - among them, Lt. Todd, a half brother of Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd. He
was an arrogant tyrant who held to the order that any prisoner who approached a
window for a breath of fresh air would have his head blown off.

Other southern prisons were at Columbia,
Florence, Morris Island in Charleston Harbor, and the city jail at Charleston,
in South Carolina; at Atlanta, Macon, Thomasville, Savannah Jail, Millen,
Pemberton, and Andersonville, in Georgia; at Shreveport, Louisiana; Tullahoma,
Tenn., Cahaba and Mobile in Alabama; and, as originally mentioned, at Ford and
Groce, Texas.

The first large scale surrender of Southern
troops took place at Fort Donelson, Tenn. General Forrest and his cavalry and
Generals Floyd and Pillow, with some five thousand infantry and cavalry fled in
the dead of' night leaving General Simon Buckner to surrender between twelve to
fifteen thousand to his old friend General Grant.

When the realization for the need of prisons
for this number became apparent' the administration in Washington contacted
Governor Yates of Ill., Morton of Indiana, Todd of Ohio, and Governors of
Missouri and Wisconsin, to imprison and care for them. So, prisons were
established in an old medical school in St. Louis; at Ft. Madison' Wis.; Rock
Island, Springfield, Alton and Chicago, Ill.; at Terre Haute, LaFayette, Indianapolis,
Ft. Wayne, and Richmond, Ind.; at Camp Dennison near Cincinnati, Camp Chase at
Columbus, and Johnson Island near Sandusky, Ohio; at Elmira, Ft. LaFayette, and
Governors Island, New York; at Ft. Warren in Boston Harbor, Mass.; Fort
McHenry, Baltimore; Ft. Delaware on Pea Island in the Delaware River; City
prison, Washington; and Ft. Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River off
South Carolina. This last is interesting because the City of Savannah was,
until captured by General Sherman, in 1064, a Southern city. The blockading
Northern fleet made this possible.

At one time or another, in the four years of
the war approximately 150 places of detention were used, but those mentioned
were the largest and held the most prisoners.

Approximately 35,782 officers, 426,852
soldiers, and 13,535 civilians were captured by the north. However/ the system
of paroling prisoners immediately after a battle' widely used in 1861 and 1862,
permitted some 225>472 Southern prisoners to return to the Confederate Army,
return home, or go west' resulting in the actual imprisonment of approximately
13,485 officers, 201,300 privates and 12,705 civilians.

When the strife settled down to a bitter war
of attrition, the Southern prisons and stockades held approximately 188,149
Northern officers and privates, of' these 34,000 were in Andersonville during
Aug. & Sept. 1864.

The Northern Army was roughly 2,250,000, the
South approximately 1,441,000.

In 61 and 62 a system of exchange was set up
by some Northern and Southern officers and Governmental Commissioner, to swap
prisoners even-eleven and thousands were thus exchanged. However, in 1863,
after Gen. Ben Butler has created a bad reputation for himself as the
Commanding Officer of captured New Orleans, Jefferson Davis placed a reward on
his head and arbitrarily tried to stop all exchange.

Much of an uncomplimentary nature has been
recorded of General Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts, but after he was
relieved Of his command at New Orleans and brought north for a command of troops
southeast of Richmond' under General Grant, he was outstanding in his efforts
for exchange of prisoners. Butler and a Southerner, named Oulds made deals that
exchanged thousands. Apparently they did not have official sanotion and Jeff
Davis' edict still hung over Butler's head, but, in late 64 and early 65 there
was a stream Of exchanges.

It wee during this period of exchange of 65
that my Uncle, Asa S. Clyne, was delivered to Wilmington, N. C. More of him
later. However, when Vicksburg had capitulated there were some 30,000
Confederate prisoners who were paroled with the proviso that they would not
take up arms again against the Federal Government, but most Of those who did
not go west to the new frontier were soon engaged in actual combat. m ese 30,000
parolees became guise a bone Or contention as the north insisted that the South
owed them 30,000 Northern prisoners to balance this number.

But in spite Or good intentions by a few, some
indifferent or downright inhuman guards came into being. Then indeed, existence
in prisons, especially in the South, became a grim ordeal. Prior to that time
treatment in some Northern prisons, especially Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio,
was a vacation from duty, Southern Officers firmly requested and acquired the
use of personal servants, roamed around the city Or Columbus, visited the State
Legislature when in session, and one Southern Jurist was invited to sit in the
body as a guest, still wearing his Southern uniform. This caused such a furor
in Washington that Johnson Island, in Lake Erie, off Sandusky, was acquired and
barracks built, a corp of guards enlisted and all Southern officers moved
there.

Things were rather uneventful at this place,
however, one inharmonious note crept in; the officers played poker morning'
noon and night' and would not even stop for Sunday worship service, so an
official order went into effect that poker playing must stop during church
services in order that the Southern brethern might be won to salvation.

Other Northern prisons reflected the character
of the officer in charge. Elmira New York was noted for lack of decent food.
Camp Douglas was moved outside Chicago to what is now a public forest preserve,
Palos Park, which, in those days was a damp muddy area, due to Lack of drainage
and deaths from tuberculosis became prevalent, Rock Island, in the Mississippi,
had frequent plagues of small pox. Camp Morton of Indianapolis was under a
harsh commander and the prisoners poorly fed until the good women of the town
did something about it and the conditions became better for the Southern boys.
All in all Southern prisoners of the North were better fed and better housed
than those Northern soldiers captured and imprisoned by the South.

The Northern Army lost prisoners in nearly
every battle and Southern prisons and stockades became distressingly crowded.
Belle Isle, Libby, Millen and Salesbury became very bad but Andersonville
became a blot on civilization. This prison was in existence on ly 14 months,
from Feb. 1864 until April 1865, and the graves of nearly 13,000 Northern men
and boys in the nearby cemetery attest to the terrible conditions, The writer
has tried to find the reason for this particular tragedy, and his own personal
opinion is set down subject to any correction that needs be made.

First, the war became very bitter. The
Northern armies were choking the Confederacy to death, the Confederate areas
were split apart, millions of slaves were idle around the plantations,
undisciplined and unproductive, and food was scarce.

Second, most of the prisoners of Andersonville
were moved from other prisons farther north and were already weakened from Lack
of food and sick from contamination.

Third, as the men became emaciated and useless
for further combat service, an interest in exchange for better fed prisoners in
the North became a contention that will remain in history, as a heartless
action by responsible leaders of both North and South.

Grant and Lee were both aware of the
condition, so were Lincoln and Davis, but the prime villian was General John
Winder of Maryland, a West Point graduate, descendant from an old Maryland
military family, whose father commanded the troops who made no resistance at
all in 1814 when the British sailed up the Potomac and burned and sacked
Washington. By Winders example of duplicity and downright cussedness, his
subordinates took on the same hue and in Capt, Henry Wirtz, a foreigner with a
thick accent' he had a willing pupil. Wirtz first comes to attention as in
charge of a small prison at Tullahoma, Tenn., where he was not regarded as a
tyrant, rather as one willing to curry the prisoner's favor. Next he is
mentioned as being in Virginia at Libby, then he was transferred to Winder as a
special assistant. Apparently his education in ruthlessness began there, and
when he was put in commend of Andersonville it became his obsession.

He was at all times in deadly fear of the
prisoners, his headquarters were smack in the center of a battery of cannon
overlooking the compound, and all his recorded action and speech denote that he
tried to hide this fear by bravado. Winder died before the end of the war and
Wirtz was left on his own.

There is evidence that he tried to establish
some system but he had little to work with. Lumber, food, medicine, doctors and
clothing were nonexistent in the Andersonville area. However, at Savannah there
were piles of supplies sent from the North that were not delivered, as was
discovered by Northern prisoners being exchanged or being sent to Millen.

John F. Lyons, one of the more solid and
factual writers, tells of his existence in Andersonville, tells of being
marched thru Savannah to board a lighter that eventually met a Northern
exchange ship, and of seeing baskets of rolls and sandwiches that the towns
people had prepared for them, but the guards refused to let them take any. And
indeed, the rank and file of Southern people were not aware of the awful prison
conditions Many tried to send food and clothing to prisoners but were prevented
from doing so.

Well supported facts seem to warrant the
conclusion that Davis' proclamations were for the purpose of rendering Union
prisoners unfit for further duty by physical and mental uselessness. The V. S.
Sanitary Commission appointed a committee with Dr. Valentine Mott of New York
as Chairman, to ascertain by inquiry and observation into the alleged cruelty
to Union Prisoners, especially at Andersonville.

They reported in Sept. 1864, saying;

It is the same story
everywhere; prisoners of war treated worse than convicts, shut up either in
suffocation buildings, or in out-door enclosures, without even the shelter
provided for beasts of the field; unsupplied with sufficient food, or supplied
with food and water injurious and even poisonous; compelled to live on floors
often covered with human filth, or on ground saturated with it, compelled to
breathe an air oppressed with an intolerable stench; hemmed in by a fatal
dead-line, and in hourly danger of being shot by unrestrained and brutal
guards; despondent even to madness, idiocy, and suicide; sick of disease (so
congruous in character as to appear and spread like the plague) caused by the
torrid sun, by decaying food, by filth, by vermin, by malaria, and by cold;
removed at the last moment, to hospitals, as corrupt as the prison pens; there,
with few remedies, little care and no sympathy, to die in wretchedness and
despair, not only among strangers, but among enemies too resentful either to
have pity or to show mercy. These are positive facts. Tens of thousands of helpless
men have been, and are now being held, disabled and destroyed by a process as
certain as poison, and as cruel as the torture of burning at the stake, because
nearly as agonizing and more prolonged. This spectacle is daily beheld and
allowed by the rebel government. No supposition of negligence, or indifference,
accident, or inefficiency, destitution, or necessity, can account for all this.
So many, and such positive forms of abuse and wrong cannot come from negative
causes. The conclusion is unavoidable' therefore, that these privations and
sufferings have been designedly inflicted, by the military and other
authorities of the rebel government, and cannot have been due to causes which
such authorities could not control.

One of the chief instrument employed in the
infliction of cruelties upon Union prisoners was the preciously mentioned
Brigadier-General John H. Winder, an inciter of the mob which attacked the
Massachusetts troops in Baltimore. So notorious for his cruel acts had he
become that when (at the age of seventy years) he was sent to Georgia to carry
on his horrid work at Andersonville, the Richmond Examiner exclaimed:
"Thank God Richmond has, at last, got rid of Winder' God have mercy upon
those to whom he has been sent"'

Testimony given by Confederates themselves
confirm the statements made by the prisoners. As early as Sept. 1862, Augustus
R. Wright, chairman of a committee of the Confederate Rouse of Representatives,
made a report on the prisons at Richmond about Union captives, to George W.
Randolph, then the Confederate Secretary of War, in which report it was said
that the state of things was "terrible beyond description", that
"the committee could not stay in the area over a few seconds"; that a
change "MUST be made", and that "the committee makes the report
to the Secretary of War, and not to the House, because in the latter case, it
would be printed, and, for the honor of the Confederacy, such things must be
kept secret."

In Dec. 1863, Henry S. Foote, a member of the
Confederate House of Representatives, offered a resolution for the appointment
of a committee of inquiry concerning the alleged ill treatment of Union
prisoners. His resolution was voted down. In the course of his remarks in its
favor Mr. Foote read testimony which, he said, was on record in the Confederate
War Dept., to prove that the charges of cruelty were true. Referring to
Northrup, the Commissary-General, he said: "This man has placed our
government in the attitude charged by the enemy, and has attempted to starve
the prisoners in our hands." He cited an elaborate report made by the
Commissary-General to the Secretary of the War (Seddon), in which he used this
significant language: "For the subsistence of a human Yankee carcass' a
vegetable diet is most proper," the meaning of which is obvious -
starvation. Foote, also in a letter written at Montreal, in the spring of 1865,
concerning the escape of Streight and his men from Libby prison, by tunneling,
declared "that a government officer of respectability'' told him
"that a Systematic scheme was on foot for subjecting these unfortunate men
to starvation." He further declared that Northrup's proposition was
"endorsed by Seddon, the Secretary of War," who said substantially in
that endorsement, that "the time had arrived for retaliation upon the
prisoners of war of the enemy." In that letter Foote proved (1) that the
starving of Union prisoners was known to the Confederate authorities; (2) that
the Confederate Commissary-General proposed it; (3) that the Confederate Secretary
of War approved and officially endorsed it; (4) that the Confederate Commission
of exchange knew it; and (5) that the Confederate House of Representatives knew
of it, and endeavored to prevent an investigation.

Foote said positive proof was in the War Department.
A great portion of these documents were burned when the Confederate Government
fled from Richmond. But such is the testimony of one of the legislators of the
Confederacy, who, it may be presumed, knew, personally, the facts of the case,
and it is a matter of record, that a committee of the "United States
Christian Commission" appeared before the lines of Lee's army and sought
access to the Union prisoners in Richmond and on Belle Isle, in the James River
there, to afford them relief, with the understanding that similar commissions
would be allowed to visit Confederate captives in the North. But they were not
allowed to pass, because, as Confederate witnesses testify, the authorities at
Richmond dared not let the outside world know, from competent witnesses, the
horrible truths which such a visit would have revealed.

When the starvation plan had succeeded in
reducing 40,000 Union prisoners to skeletons, generally no better for service
than dead men, a proposition was made by Confederate authorities for resumption
of exchanges.

Again the North assented because of the pity
felt for those imprisoned, and they were exchanged for prisoners who had been
relatively well fed and otherwise provided for.

This was attested to by the Confederate
Commissioners of exchange, who, in a letter to Gen. Winder, from City Point,
where exchanges were resumed, said;- "The arrangement works largely in our
favor. We get rid of a set of miserable wretches and receive some of the best
material I have seen."

But, the great body of Southern people were
entirely guiltless of the proven cruelties toward the Union prisoners, and they
were kept in profound ignorance of the existing conditions.

Exchange and parole of Prisoners of War

When prisoners were exchanged, there was no
agreement that they could not again be inducted into actual service.

However, when prisoners signed parole
agreements it was supposed to bind them not to take active part in military
action again.

There seems to have been considerable exchange
of officers) who, when released from custody again assumed command. Buckner is
an example, also Gen. Stoneman. However, the parole system was not strictly
a& adhered to.

As an illustration, the 30,000 prisoners whom
Pemberton surrendered to Grant at Vicksburg, soon were fighting in various
Confederate units after they had been paroled. The exceptions North and South,
were the bounty jumpers and downright cowards who surrendered to avoid
fighting, and Labored under the impression that they would immediately be
paroled and sent home. Some were - and these men became a problem in the North.
They Literally mutinied against any form of exercise, and the fact that each
Northern Governor wanted the Washington Administration to send paroled
prisoners to the respective states did not help matters.

There was an attempt to have these men police
the prison camps, join up to fight Indians, and do various military chores as
laborers, but because of an indefinite over-all policy, there was confusion and
political bitterness between state and national bodies. The men were a sorry
lot, unpaid for past services and no better fed or clothed than the prisoners
of the rebel army.

In the South those ax-soldiers who did not
disappear to Mexico or the new west, were literally impressed into active
service again.

me problem, both North and South) toward the
end of hostilities was of gigantic proportions. So that desertions, surrenders,
and the fact that over three million colored slaves were on the loose without
discipline helped hasten the end of the Confederacy.

During all this time, 1864 and early 1865, Ben
Butler did heroic service in exchanges with Oulds of the South.

In April, 1864, General Sherman sent General
Geo. Stoneman, with his cavalry Corps, to break the railroad at Jonesboro, Ga.
The orders were broadened to a raid on Andersonville Prison with part of his
force.

Early in August he was cut off at Clinton,
Gal, and was forced to surrender with part of his command. The rest cut their
way out and back to Sherman's army with heavy losses.

General Stoneman remained a prisoner until he
was exchanged in Oct. 1864. This is the only action we were able to find for
relief of the prisoners in Andersonville.

Let us hear a little of Cahaba, Ala., eight
miles south of Selma, at the conflux of the Cahaba and Alabama Rivers.

First capital of Alabama, it was founded in
1820, and at its peak was a city of 5000 with stately mansions and hotels and
an aristocracy the equal of any in the South, but in 1861 it was a dying
community. Here, in 1863, an abandoned cotton shed 193 ft. long and 116 ft.
wide became the prison of 3000 Northern captives.

The officer in charge, a Lt. Jones, was worse
than Wirtz and stole everything of value from each prisoner as he was taken in,
Only half a roof remained and that full of holes, and for a horrible abode, it
was as bad as Andersonville. An artesion well 12 inches in diameter and of
considerable depth, which supplied water to the town, had been sunk by a
planter named Perinne.

me prison stockade was supplied by this well
by a run off of an open gutter through the town, and subject to the washing of
hands and feet and the bathing of soldiers and negroes, the rinsing of tubs and
cuspidors, and the filth from hogs, dogs and horses, before it reached the
stockade. When the river flooded, the compound was under water from 6 to 8
inches, and the prisoners could not cook their rations or lie down to sleep
until the water receded.

A Southern surgeon sent in a scathing report
about the condition at Cahaba to Southern Administrators. A copy of this report
was published in the Federal Congressional Report of the 40th Congress, page
737, so it had authenticity. The place was called (Castle Morgan) in honor of
Gen. John Hunt Morgan.

Referring again to Asa S. Clyne, an Uncle of
the writer; he served through the Virginia Campaign' survived 15 major battles
and was captured near Petersburg, on June 16th, 1864, wounded and unable to get
away.

He was sent to Andersonville and remained imprisoned
there until Mar. 4th, 1865. He was then delivered to the Union lines at
Wilmington, N. C., more dead than alive, and given honorable discharge in June
of the same year, and sent back North to his home in Ulster Co., N. Y. None of
his brothers or sisters recognized him because of his extreme emaciation. The
writer has many vivid memories of listening to him and several other veterans,
(who were then younger men than the present veterans of World War I) as they
spun their tales and experiences while sitting around the pot bellied stove
which heated his store. On a cold winter afternoon after school it was a spine
tingling experience.

Time has wrought a miracle of mellowing both
the prison sites and cemetery areas.

Andersonville, and indeed all other prison
sites, after 95 years of mellowing, are places of tranquility, and it is
difficult to envision the hideous episodes that once took place.

The cemetery at Andersonville is exceptionally
lovely. There is a canopied stone speaker's rostrum where for years after the
war, relatives of victims gathered on the 30th of May, and filled the air with
recriminations and Northern war songs, especially, "Marching Through
Georgia."

But those days are gone, other wars have been
fought and won, and time has healed the deep wounds given to man by man.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Years of Madness" Wm. E. Woodward

"Cahaba" Jesse Hawes

"The Army in Civil War" Scribner
& Sons, N.Y.

"Regimental Losses in the Civil War"
Fox

"The Annals of the Army of
Tennessee" Dr Edwin L. Drake

"Capture, The Prison Pen, and the
escape" Glazier

"Civil War Prisons" W. B. Hesseltine

"Prisoners and Prisons of the Civil
War" Hammerlein

"Numbers and Losses in the Civil
War" Thos. L. Livermore

"In and Out of Andersonville" W. F.
Lyons

"This was Andersonville" John
McElroy

"Short Biography of Northern
Generals" C.J. Wood, Army Surgeon

"Andersonville, The Raiders and
Regulators" The Atlanta Journal & Constitution